1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of interactive profiling, reporting, and tracking systems and programs.
2. Summary of the Invention
The systems and methods of this invention utilize an education management system, which provides parents and/or teachers with profiling, reporting, tracking, and community outreach services. The features of this invention maintain and consolidate student information, such as, for example, profiles, reports, and scores in one integrated and interactive personal administration schooling system.
In various exemplary embodiments, the systems and methods of this invention facilitate the home education process, including selection and customization of curriculum materials, reporting, tracking, and community outreach, including communication and socialization. In other exemplary embodiments, the systems and methods of this invention may be utilized by teachers in a more formal private or public school setting. These systems and methods provide educators, whether they are parents or professional teachers or instructors, with more time to train by reducing labor-intensive administrative chores.
More specifically, the invention allows educators to have access, via, for example, the Internet, to resources typically only available to teachers in more traditionally organized school systems. The interactive systems and methods of this invention provide at least one of profiling of students and educational products, reporting engines, tracking features, and community outreach programs.
The profiling feature presents an educator with a series of questions regarding the student, some optional and some necessary, to be completed by the teacher or instructor. The questions and responses are effectively weighted based on predetermined factors, such that information that is more relevant to, for example, suggesting an appropriate educational product or curriculum material (such as questions regarding the student's special needs or religious preference) are given greater weight than personal identification information (such as the student's name and address).
When the specific student information is received, the information is used to create a specific student profile, which is then stored in a database and used to select educational products that are particularly suited to the specific student's profile.
For example, if a student's age, gender, interests, skill level, known learning disabilities, and religious preferences are provided, the systems and methods of this invention may weight the known learning disabilities and religious preferences information more heavily than the age, gender, interests and skill level information. The specific student profile is then used to match the student to recommended educational resources and curriculum materials (also weighted to the specific student profile information) for that student, based on the specific student profile and product profiles. This virtually eliminates the need for the educator to perform complex analysis of the student against the various available curriculum materials.
By profiling each individual student, the educator also utilizes the systems and methods of this invention to purchase and receive the selected educational products, curriculum materials and lesson plans for each student.
Because the systems and methods of this invention are able to be accessed and utilized over a network, users also have a community outreach feature, which allows them to communicate with other users via e-mail and messaging, and through public and private chat rooms and/or clubs. Users or groups of users may, for example, participate in polls, learn important factual points, discuss curriculum ideas, and/or receive quarterly newsletters authored by leaders in education.
The reporting feature provides a series of reports, such as, for example, an accessible progress record and/or report card for each student. A user may download documents for printing and submission to, for example, other parents, teachers or educational boards and governing authorities.
The tracking feature provides educators with technology empowered tools to monitor on an on-going basis over time the placement, performance, and scoring of their students. These tools are specifically designed to track resource allocation (financial, human and temporal) on a dynamic scale.